Your favourite/least favourite motorcycle magazine, and why.

I like Rider and Motorcycle Consumer News pretty good. I've also got a sub to Cycle World. Its ok, but if a sub wasn't cheap, I'd drop it.

I no longer care for Motorcyclist. I too noticed it was writing for a much younger audience than me. Its a legitimate business model I suppose, but doesn't interest me. I liked that they used to publish ergo measurements with their road tests, but the last few issues I saw, most of their tests were a half page long with no actual measured data. Not just ergos, but weights, mpgs, etc. I also don't care much for Jaime Eldvidge (sp? don't care enough to look it up).

Showing how old I am, I think I still have (hidden somewhere) the first issue of Cycle magazine I bought in 1970. That was shortly after Cook Nielson took over the magazine. It has a picture of Dick Mann's Daytona-winning Honda 750 on the cover. It also had a short article on the Yamaha Mini-Enduro (JT-1), which was my dream bike at the time. The magazine's high water mark was when Nielson and Shilling ran the Hot Rod.

Now, I prefer Performance Bike from the UK (I subscribe). Lots of stuff about older bikes and how to keep them on the road, willing to say tough stuff about bikes they're reviewing. Fun features like their monthly Garages, and Guy Martin is a columnist.

Bike is good as well (I subscribe to this, too), but it was awesome ten years ago when Dan Walsh was writing for them. The best motorcycle writer ever. Buy a copy of his assembled aritings, These are the Days That Must Happen to You. Brilliant stuff. Damon l'Anson was good, too, but did not stay that long.

CW and Motorcyclist? Meh. I might buy them if I see them on the rack in the supermarket.

To be honest, I was disappointed with RoadRunner. Yes the maturity was there, but nothing about the bikes. Maybe if you are not that interseted in motorcycles as a hobby, but only as a means of getting there, it is a fine travel mag.

I used to subscribe to Sport Rider, but it is the polar opposite or RoadRunner. The articles were entirely about the latest crop of bikes, and how they compare. As a buyer's guide, it was great.

Motorcycle News is a better magazine for those who want to keep up on all products related to motorcycles, not just the bikes.

I have been enjoying 2 publications new to my area: ADVMoto and Motorcycle Escape. ADV has only 6 issues per year, and Escape has only 4. You can only susbscribe to ADVMoto. Escape must be bought at the store, and is hard for me to find. ADVMoto seemed a bit heavy in advertisements, so I finished the whole mag too quickly. I liked it though, so I subscribed in hopes it would go to a 12 issue schedule eventually. Escape is a great magazine (at least the one issue I found so far while away on business). It is pretty focussed on ADV style riding, however, but that's fine by me.

Showing how old I am, I think I still have (hidden somewhere) the first issue of Cycle magazine I bought in 1970. That was shortly after Cook Nielson took over the magazine. It has a picture of Dick Mann's Daytona-winning Honda 750 on the cover. It also had a short article on the Yamaha Mini-Enduro (JT-1), which was my dream bike at the time. The magazine's high water mark was when Nielson and Shilling ran the Hot Rod.

Now, I prefer Performance Bike from the UK (I subscribe). Lots of stuff about older bikes and how to keep them on the road, willing to say tough stuff about bikes they're reviewing. Fun features like their monthly Garages, and Guy Martin is a columnist.

Bike is good as well (I subscribe to this, too), but it was awesome ten years ago when Dan Walsh was writing for them. The best motorcycle writer ever. Buy a copy of his assembled aritings, These are the Days That Must Happen to You. Brilliant stuff. Damon l'Anson was good, too, but did not stay that long.

CW and Motorcyclist? Meh. I might buy them if I see them on the rack in the supermarket.

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well to each his own. I would have said Dan Walsh is the WORST motorcycle writer ever.

well to each his own. I would have said Dan Walsh is the WORST motorcycle writer ever.

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Dan Walsh is an acquired taste with a Gonzo style but to me he is clearly a very gifted writer who interweaves a personal perspective to his writing, one focused on searching for meaning in his travels and his place in the world. I enjoyed his book immensely.

So, Bike is my clear favorite and Motorcyclist/Cycle World tie for least.

Magazine choice aside, I always marvel at how the writer of the article about the latest/greatest will rave about a new model, and toss out things like "of course it's much better than the last model which had terrible head shake" or "the last bike as we know had horrible vibrations".

Wait a minute, you never wrote there was any problem with the last bike. No mention of head shake or vibrations, just boundless praise, so where does this "as we know" crap come from? I've noticed car mag writers do the exact same thing, so it must be an industry standard.

well to each his own. I would have said Dan Walsh is the WORST motorcycle writer ever.

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You too huh?
How the hell does guys like him make a living as motorcycle journalists? He rambles on and on about getting drunk and it is barely coherent. When you wer ein high school/college, did you ever record yourself with your friends getting drunk or stoned? Then the next morning, once you were sober again you listened to it and it was complete and utter crap? That is what reading Dan Wlash's rubbish is like for me.

My two year subscription to Motorcyclist is about to expire, and I have no intention of renewing it. I think it's a dull publication. I'd like to hear from people here what magazines they read and love, or have read and really disliked. I'm going to subscribe to a new magazine based on your input. And I like hearing criticism of bad things, because, who doesn't?

So to start off, I don't have a favourite, hence why I'm asking you guys. For my least favourite, I guess it's the one I'm reading now, Motorcyclist. Here's what I don't like about Motorcyclist:

- It's absolutely chock full of boring, one-page editorials that feel like they were written the day before they were due. Lots of reminiscing about first bikes, buying used bikes, new technology, old technology, the bike that got away, etc, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but you've gotta have a good story to tell, and you've got to tell it well. That seldom happens. And if you're going to ramble on about something I barely care about, put in some interesting pictures!

- They include a few token cruiser reviews, usually written by some guy who hates cruisers.

- They have more and more articles on electric bikes and scooters. I shouldn't mind that, but I often just skip or skim these articles.

- They are full of really uninteresting insider news about the staff of the magazine, about who went to what show and who met this famous motorcycle dude from the sixties, and who bought his favourite 90's bike. Seriously.

- The last page is devoted to a goofy picture and half a page of really, really unfunny writing, often referencing someone from the staff (more unfunny inside jokes).

- There is a section called "Doin' Time" where they list off all the expensive mods they've done on a particular motorcycle that they are evaluating long term, and then they say nothing about how fun the bike is to ride, or where they've ridden it, or anything close to a personal, interesting observation about the bike.

Anyways, you get the point. Motorcyclist replaced their Editor In Chief, and I hoped for some changes, but it's been the same old boring articles in the same old template.

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Totally agree about Motorcyclist. Immature, self absorbed. It was a foregone conclusion that they would pick the Honda CB750 or some such as the mc of the century recently. I'm not saying the CB750 wasn't important, but the foregone conclusion was that they would pick a bike that was important to THEM, in their formative years. Anything previous to their own personal experience - no way it would be considered.

I was glad Catterson - a legend in his own mind- left CW for Motorcyclist as it improved Cycle World, pretty much my favorite.

MCN is my favorite as they provide fairly honest reviews of bikes/gear/products since they are not directly beholden to the companies that make them. (i.e. add $$$$)

I also subscribe to CW & Motorcyclist as well. I figure it is interesting to compare each magazines reviews to each other to try and figure out anything however it is more often then not that both CW & Motorcyclist will give blushing reviews of a particular motorcycle and then MCN will give it a mediocre review. This just reinforces the fact that advertising money plays a role in how the magazine reviews and shows that MCN at least tries to be subjective when reviewing a product.